


Doomed From The Start

by JrSpaceclaw



Category: Starship - Team StarKid
Genre: Abusive Parents, Alcohol, Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Depression, Eaten alive, Gore, Graphic Description, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Marijuana, Regret, Vent fic of sorts, just lots of sad shit, ya know how jr dies so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 13:44:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19831435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JrSpaceclaw/pseuds/JrSpaceclaw
Summary: Junior is ten, and he's a fairly normal kid.He has hobbies, friends and good grades.And he wants to be a superhero.Just like his dad.





	Doomed From The Start

**Author's Note:**

> Some angsty stuff, because my mood doesn't really let me write fluff ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Junior is ten, and he’s a fairly normal kid.

He’s still excited about going to school; he likes playing with his classmates, drawing with chalk, constructing miniature planes using cardboard. He’s smart, but tends to keep that to himself, sitting in the back of the class and solving mathematical problems in complete silence, his gaze fixed on the tablet.

He also likes superheroes, as countless other kids do - and he feels a sense of pride knowing that his father is kind of a superhero as well.

The head of the Galactic League, who plans risky missions and almost always succeeds; who keeps the vast universe tamed. Junior loves listening to his stories about other planets, and he’s beaming with joy hearing about one day inheriting his father’s position.

He can imagine himself being a superhero.

* * *

Junior is twelve, and he starts noticing that something is changing.

His classmates are keeping distance - they no longer invite him to play with them, no longer compliment his drawings and handmade toys. It feels weird, and he doesn’t understand it at all. At first he tries to go on as if nothing was happening. At first he tries to ask to be included, and is usually accepted.

But then the other kids glance at him. Ignore what he says.

Finally, they start calling him names.

Junior is twelve and a half, and he stops asking.

* * *

Junior is thirteen, and he’s completely alone.

One of his classmates tells him what it’s about - their parents are scared of his father. His reputation is flawless; it’s the fact that he’s a powerful person that makes people cautious.

“What’s that have to do with me?”, Junior asks, frowning.

“You could snitch”, the boy replies, and his eyes suddenly widen. “Don’t tell him I said that!”

“I’m not telling him anything about any of you.”

Now he knows why he’s being ignored, but it doesn’t change anything.

Everyone knows who he is, and no one wants to risk doing or saying something that could somehow get to Doctor Spaceclaw and cause them problems.

* * *

Junior is fourteen, and his father’s expectations are getting higher and higher.

He spends entire days studying, both normal school subjects and the history of the League, data about other planets, tactics, the characteristics of a good leader. 

He also trains to be in peak physical condition. He goes jogging, swimming, he does pushups and situps.

But it’s never enough.

And just like with his classmates, it’s a process.

At first his father calmly reminds him of his training and studies.

Then, he glares at his son with visible disapproval and makes short, but cutting remarks whenever he’s doing something just for fun.

Finally, there are lectures, always the same, always about the importance of being a good leader.

And they always end with a series of insults.

Junior is being called a failure. A good-for-nothing. An idiot. A disappointment.

He grits his teeth and trains harder, hoping for these words to cease when he becomes better, stronger.

* * *

Junior is sixteen, and he realizes that he’s bisexual.

It’s no longer a big deal. Everyone is and loves whoever they want. It’s usually a matter of specifying their identity to family and friends.

Junior doesn’t have friends.

His father doesn’t really care.

He wants to tell his mother, but he decides against it. It doesn’t matter. He has more important things to do and think about.

And it’s not like anyone would want to be with a failure like him, after all.

* * *

Junior is eighteen, and he feels empty.

His father ignores his achievements, while scolding and belittling him for every little mistake, every little sign of weakness.

His mother tries to be encouraging and supportive, but it’s not enough; he wants nothing more than for his father to be proud of him.

Although maybe he is just impossible to be proud of.

Maybe he won’t make a good leader.

* * *

Junior is twenty, and he starts smoking pot.

He just wants to try it, and before he realizes, getting high becomes the only bright point in his life.

It helps him distance himself from his life, from the expectations he has to meet, from the emptiness and hopelessness inside him.

It’s nice, and his father doesn’t know about it.

It’s the first thing that’s only Junior’s.

* * *

Junior is twenty one, and he’s a Starship Ranger; he also becomes an ambassador, the youngest in history.

Everyone knows it’s only thanks to his father, and Junior knows they’re calling him a spoiled brat, a rich kid who got everything from his parents.

He tries his best, and he’s pretty successful at it; people don’t have anything to complain about.

Still, Doctor Spaceclaw isn’t proud. There are still lectures, still insults, and Junior’s sense of hopelessness is getting overwhelming.

He starts to wonder if he does anyone any good by continuing to live.

Fortunately, getting high numbs these thoughts.

* * *

Junior is twenty three, and he decides to go to a shabby pub, get completely wasted and forget all about his pathetic life.

He gets drunk pretty quickly, then he goes outside to smoke weed, and the combination gives him the biggest high he’d ever experienced.

He doesn’t remember much afterwards, only that he feels truly alive.

Someone notices him, and he ends up making out with them and giving them his number and getting theirs.

The next day he wakes up feeling like absolute shit.

The mysterious someone calls him.

They’re interested in him, and he feels a sudden wave of warmth until he remembers who he is, and more specifically, what he is.

A constant disappointment, impossible to be proud of.

Unlovable.

He blocks them and with a sigh lies back down in his bed and closes his eyes.

* * *

Junior is twenty five, and he’s dying.

_ No. No. No! _

He’s running through the labyrinth of the Hive, trying to get rid of the larvae devouring him alive, but they’ve bit hard, he’s bleeding, getting weaker and weaker, and he realizes that he won’t get out of this alive.

He slows down, exhausted, and screams in pain as another larva bites into his back. He tries to crush it against the wall of the corridor, but he’s way too weak, and the larva just bites harder.

So that’s how he’s going to die - eaten by bugs, until nothing remains of him.

He’s still trying to run, but tears are clouding his vision, and they start to mix with blood. He hears the disgusting sounds of larvae eating, and he wants to scream, but he doesn’t have enough energy to do that.

He starts to sob instead.

His life is meaningless. Everything about him is meaningless. He’s been just a vessel for his father’s words, ideas, plans. He betrayed the Starship Rangers, but he could have joined them. He  _ should  _ have joined them.

Maybe it’s for the best.

He falls down when his left leg suddenly gives out.

The larvae must have chewed through the nerves.

He’s crawling forward, but hopelessness overpowers him.

Why should he live?

Why should he try to save himself?

The other Rangers would kill him on sight anyway.

So he stops. Rests his forehead on the ground.

He spends his last moments fantasizing.

Imagining all the ‘what if’ scenarios. There’s not much of these.

That was just his life. He was doomed from the start. Everything that happened to him was caused by the sole fact that his father was Doctor Spaceclaw, the manipulative leader of the Galactic League, who was secretly planning to take over the galaxy.

And he won’t even mourn his son, Junior knows it.

No one will.

And that is his final thought, final realization right before a larva bites into his throat.

He never mattered.


End file.
